WHAT ABOUT US: Frustrated fans protest the NHL labor impasse outside the NHL Store in Manhattan yesterday. The third lockout in commissioner Gary Bettman’s tenure began last night at midnight. Photo: Drew Loftis

Other than the collateral damage the owners’ lockout will inflict on various groups of innocent third-party civilians who are dependent upon the NHL for income, the saddest aspect of this fiasco is the opportunity that has been forfeited by the league to break through the frozen ceiling under which it operates in the United States.

As represented by Gary Bettman in both word and deed, the NHL is exposed as a small-minded operation, one utterly lacking in creativity and ingenuity with a primary — if not sole — mission to generate as much profit as possible for its most well-heeled franchise owners.

Talk of “growing the game” has been abandoned. The commissioner, who on Thursday said it is unrealistic to expect revenue to continue to grow at the annual rate of 7.1 percent it did through the seven seasons under the CBA that expired at midnight, is out of ideas.

The league has been taking credit for steady growth of income that reached a record $3.28 billion in hockey-related revenue last year, but on Thursday, Bettman attributed that success to three factors — the strength of the Canadian dollar; the 10-year, $2 billion NBC contract; and last season’s franchise shift from Atlanta to Winnipeg.

Of course, there is a fourth factor: the significant annual hikes in ticket prices pretty much across the board, and most dramatically in the league’s biggest markets.

These collective bargaining negotiations could and should have focused on expanding the industry, could and should have focused on a cooperative plan to reap the benefits of the ready-made market in Europe the league has never made a concerted effort to mine.

There could have and should have been serious talk about best-on-best international tournaments and about developing limited interlocking schedules with the KHL and the Swedish Elite League.

There could and should have been talk about moving a second team into the Toronto/southern Ontario market; about ending the endless cycle of propping up franchises in markets doomed to fail.

These talks should and could have been about expanding the league’s reach and, to use a term long abandoned by Sixth Avenue, “growing the game.”

Instead, these talks as initiated and conducted by the NHL are all and only about limits and hard caps — limiting the amount the owners pay across the board to the players and reducing the cap under which the teams operate.

Instead, these talks are about expanding the owners’ wallets.

In the years since the lockout, the NHL has generated one revenue-generating initiative — the Winter Classic. The league has conducted the New Year’s outdoor celebration in a masterful fashion, but the concept actually was introduced at the NHL level in 2003 by the Oilers, whose organization established the template with the wildly successful Heritage Classic.

The NHL is the only pro league in the U.S. that has signed over its exclusive television rights to one network. The 10-year deal with the league includes no escalators, no triggers for increased payments for increased ratings. It’s all locked in.

In other words, it is hard-capped.

Assuming the lockout lasts into the season, the Rangers indeed will save money in the short-term by not waiving Wade Redden to the Whale.

The overriding factor in keeping Redden — who played the past two seasons in Hartford — on the NHL roster is to ensure he doesn’t get hurt playing in the AHL and thus become ineligible for an amnesty buyout that likely will become part of a new CBA.

Redden has two seasons remaining on his contract under which he is due to be paid $5 million per.

There is no explanation whatsoever for the lucrative, long-term contracts given Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle in Edmonton, the one given Jeff Skinner by Carolina, and the one awarded Tyler Seguin in Boston, all after the completion of two seasons of their respective three-year Entry Level deals and years before they would have been eligible for salary arbitration or free agency.

What is the point of teams owning systemic CBA leverage if they refuse to use it?

The Rangers’ offer to Group II free agent Michael Del Zotto coming off his Entry Level deal was for two or three years at upward of $2.5 million per. If the cap is squeezed coming out of the lockout, Del Zotto, who may see his arbitration rights and free-agent eligibility deferred as a result of the agreement, will get less; perhaps significantly less.

* Asked and answered: If Bettman had negotiated as bad a CBA for the league out of the 2004-05 lockout as he now contends, would the Board of Governors not only have extended his contract in the fall of 2010, but given the commissioner a substantial raise to nearly $8 million per?